This invention relates to apparatus for processing parts of garments, and more particularly to apparatus for trimming, turning and pressing runstitched collars.
In a widely used mode of manufacture of shirt collars, the collars are formed by assembling flatwise one on another three plies of material cut to the desired shape of the collar, thereby having a top edge, a bottom edge (which is usually concavely curved) and inclined end edges, and then runstitching the plies together. By "runstitching" is meant that the plies are stitched together along one end edge, the bottom edge and the other end edge on a line of stitching spaced inward of these three edges, the plies remaining free of one another along the top edge (the fourth edge). Generally, two of the plies are cut from the shirt fabric material and the third ply is cut from a relatively stiff fabric to constitute an interliner. The plies are assembled with the two shirt fabric plies one against the other, with their faces which are ultimately to be on the outside of the collar on the inside one against the other, and with the interliner on one of the shirt fabric plies. In the subsequent stage of manufacture, the runstiched collar is processed by trimming its points (i.e., the corners of the intersections of the end edges and the bottom edge), turning (everting) it to bring the two plies of shirt fabric on the outside of the interliner with their faces which were on the inside now on the outside, and then pressing the turned collar.
This invention has been developed especially for the trimming and turning of runstitched collars and the pressing of the turned collar. The invention may be regarded as an improvement on prior apparatus for this purpose which has been commercially available, such as the AUTOPRESS II Model 9900 Collar Machine sold by Teledyne Amco of Reading, Pennsylvania, the basic features of which may be ascertained from the U.S. Pat. No. 3,633,799 issued Jan. 11, 1972. Reference may also be made to U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,553,194; 2,619,267; 2,804,244, and 2,995,279 as relevant prior art.
While the AUTOPRESS II machine has been in use for many years, and is believed to be the most widely used collar trimming, turning and pressing machine, it does not enable production of collars with as neat and even a bottom edge as may be desired without time-consuming extra manual rolling of the edge, and may not enable as rapid a rate of production as may be desired.